Pamela Stevenson launches campaign for Senate
HENDERSON, Ky. (WEHT)- Kentucky House Minority Leader Pamela Stevenson officially launches her campaign for the seat now held by Senator Mitch McConnell, who announced in February he would not seek re-election.
Runaway fugitive found with 'trafficking-level' amounts of illegal narcotics
Stevenson is a Democrat from Louisville and is a retired Air Force Colonel, attorney, and minister who has served in the Kentucky House since 2021. She previously ran for Kentucky Attorney General in 2023, but lost to republican opponent, Russell Coleman.
Republican and former Attorney General, Daniel Cameron is also running for McConnell's seat, and several other in the GOP are considering to run for the position. The senate election will be held in 2026.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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27 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Opinion - Trump-Musk divorce threatens the president and the entire Republican Party
Few expected the relationship between President Trump and Elon Musk to survive four years, but the spectacular collapse of this partnership has shocked even seasoned observers with its speed and intensity. Now, as two of the world's most powerful men openly clash, there are seismic implications for the country as a whole and the Republican Party specifically. Put another way, not only does this fissure expose cracks in the GOP and MAGA coalition, it's also a considerable threat to Republicans' midterms hopes and Trump's signature legislation. The fight, which began two weeks ago when Musk expressed 'disappointment' with Trump's 'one big, beautiful' bill had initially been confined to disagreements over the legislation, rather than personal attacks. Then, on Thursday afternoon, it escalated in unprecedented, dramatic fashion. Following Trump's recent comment that he would have won Pennsylvania without Musk's help, Musk replied 'Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate.' That was just Musk's opening salvo against the man he spent roughly $300 million to get elected. The tech billionaire then went on a blistering war path. He claimed Trump was on 'the Epstein list,' supported impeachment — a touchy subject for the twice-impeached Trump — and claimed that tariffs would cause a recession. Not content with attacking Trump, Musk has also threatened to fund primary challenges to Republicans who support the bill, and has criticized both Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.). With unprecedented speed, Musk went from the man who could pour hundreds of millions into Republican coffers to Republicans' enemy number one. Influential commentator Steve Bannon pushed for Musk's deportation, claiming he's an illegal alien, and Trump threatened to cancel all government contracts with Musk's multiple companies, saying Musk 'went CRAZY.' Whether or not the rumors of an impending détente between the two is enough to heal the rupture remains to be seen, but it's unlikely that all of the pieces will ever get put back together. Given Musk's deep pockets and control of social media platform X, where he has a cult-like following, Trump and the Republicans now find themselves in a treacherous spot at a precarious time. Indeed, even before the dramatic escalation, Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' was in limbo in the Senate. As Alexander Bolton noted in this publication prior to Thursday's blowup, Trump's bill is 'losing momentum in the Senate in the face of blistering attacks from Elon Musk.' To that end, Musk's criticisms of the bill and threats to primary its Republican supporters has already led two House Republicans who voted for the bill, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and John Rose (R-Tenn.), to come out against some of it. It appears that this fight has brought some Republicans back into Trump's fold. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who had been opposed to the bill prior to its passage in the House, condemned Musk, saying he 'crossed the line.' And Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn), another House conservative, dismissed Musk's influence, saying he is 'just another shiny object.' For their part, Republican senators who may have had doubts about Trump's signature legislation now risk being seen as taking Musk's side and being disloyal to the president. However, it would be a mistake to overlook the implications of the breakup or the dangers for Republicans. If he wants, Musk could very easily fund primaries against vulnerable GOP House members, and his control of X gives him unprecedented influence over the media ecosystem. Further, Musk's influence among the Silicon Valley cohort that moved stridently to the right in 2024 could peel off a new group of Republican voters and donors. In that same vein, there are possible electoral consequences for Republicans, even if tempers between Trump and Musk cool down. Trump was counting on the bill's passage to be a significant political tailwind that would boost his polling numbers and Republicans' midterm hopes, particularly given the ongoing chaos over tariffs and trade policy. Now, whichever version of the bill eventually passes, Republicans look like the party of chaos. It is entirely possible that this ongoing feud dents voters' confidence in Republicans' ability to competently govern, something Democrats are clearly hoping for. 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All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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27 minutes ago
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L.A. Burns
Riots in Los Angeles: President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles following three days of clashes between protesters and police. The riots were set off when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided workplaces in pursuit of immigrants here illegally. Most of the violence has so far been contained to downtown L.A. There, rioters have set self-driving Waymo taxis on fire and vandalized buildings. Protests are also happening some 15 miles south in Paramount, to the east of Compton and north of Long Beach. Jim McDonnell, the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), implied the protests were not occurring organically and that the violence should be attributed to "anarchists" and "people who do this all the time." More than 150 people have been arrested in the L.A. protests since Friday, with 60 arrested in San Francisco (where similar protests are happening, but with less damage so far). At one point, it looks like the LAPD shot a journalist with a rubber bullet: "Trump's order for the troops was the first time since 1965 that a president had activated a state's National Guard force for a domestic operation without a state governor's request for the purposes of quelling unrest or enforcing the law," reports The New York Times. The paper quoted California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, saying Trump's move "is purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions"; he added that "this is the wrong mission and will erode public trust." (As for what he thinks the right mission is, I guess I just haven't listened to enough of his podcasts to be able to say.) It's hard to know where this goes: Whether it escalates further, whether the National Guard's presence will actually quell the unrest, whether public sentiment toward deportations changes based on the conduct of the rioters, and how much property damage Angelenos are willing to tolerate. 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Miami Herald
35 minutes ago
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Biden alums could boost their House ranks in midterm elections
WASHINGTON - As a senior attorney in the Commerce Department, Eric Chung helped implement the 2022 law known as the CHIPS and Science Act, a bipartisan effort championed by President Joe Biden to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing and scientific research. But Chung left his civil service job in April, shortly after President Donald Trump called the law a "horrible, horrible thing" in a joint address to Congress and urged lawmakers to scrap the CHIPS program. (Last week, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Senate appropriators that Trump is renegotiating some of Biden's semiconductor grants.) "With elections, there are consequences and you expect some changes,'' Chung said. "But the idea of just going after a program that's so bipartisan ... for no apparent reason, just railing against it, certainly disappointed me, and I just couldn't watch it unfold." Now Chung is running for Congress - he's one of at least four Democrats hoping to flip Michigan's 10th District - and he's highlighting his experience working on one of the Biden administration's signature legislative achievements. He isn't the only one. As Trump tries to unwind much of his Democratic predecessor's agenda, a handful of federal employees who helped carry out the Biden administration's policy priorities are seeking House seats in 2026. They are mostly competing in battleground districts and are expected to face competitive primaries. The list includes Michael Roth, a former official in the Small Business Administration vying to unseat New Jersey Republican Thomas H. 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While Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales rates the race Solid Democratic, Trump significantly cut into his margins in the suburban Chicago district, from a 15-point loss in 2020 to a 7-point deficit last year, according to calculations by The Downballot. Dunung, who describes herself as "a pragmatic workhorse," said she launched her bid for Congress partly as a reaction to what she called the "chaos ... and crony capitalism" of the Trump administration. "I'm also about change from within our party, the Democratic Party," she said. "I think there are better ways to do things, and we need to prioritize efficiency. We need to prioritize getting results, not necessarily being beholden to special interests." Both Dunung and Chung recently won endorsements from the political arm of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. Chung is also seeking an open House seat - Michigan's 10th District outside Detroit, where Republican incumbent John James is running for governor. Chung initially intended to stay in his position at the Commerce Department even after Trump won. "If any program was going to be safe in this administration, it should have been a program like (CHIPS),'' he said. "I was hopeful that we could work all together across the aisle. And as a career civil servant, your oath is to the Constitution, and your oath is to the country." But Chung, who grew up in Michigan as the son of Vietnamese immigrants, concluded that he had to leave. "I wasn't waking up every morning thinking I'd run for office,'' he said, "but when I saw that my community and basically every part of the American dream that I had experienced growing up in Michigan was in potential jeopardy, I wanted to do all I could." Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
